Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton, and this is in fact a
Speaker 1: podcast about why public health matters after so much grief, fear,
Speaker 1: and uncertainty. I know many people are eager to put
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen behind us, but we're not out of the
Speaker 1: woods yet, and there are so many lessons that we
Speaker 1: must learn from this pandemic to be better prepared for
Speaker 1: the next one. COVID nineteen isn't the first pandemic that
Speaker 1: has swept the globe. The nineteen eighteen flu pandemic infected
Speaker 1: one third of the world's population, and more recent history,
Speaker 1: the Obama administration created a pandemic playbook for how to
Speaker 1: address quote a high consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world because public health officials have long worried that
Speaker 1: there could be another global pandemic. So just how unprecedented
Speaker 1: has this last year been, What have we learned from
Speaker 1: past crises, what can we learn from this one? And
Speaker 1: how prepared is our country and our world for the
Speaker 1: next pandemic. We're talking about all of this with someone
Speaker 1: who has become for many the public base of our
Speaker 1: government's response to COVID nineteen, Dr Anthony Faucci, Dr Fauci
Speaker 1: was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Speaker 1: Infectious Diseases back in during a hugely consequential moment in
Speaker 1: the HIV AIDS pandemic. His research was crucial to understanding
Speaker 1: how the virus works, and he was one of the
Speaker 1: leading architects of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
Speaker 1: or pet FAR, which has helped saved millions of lives
Speaker 1: around the world. He's advised seven presidents on how to prevent, diagnose,
Speaker 1: and treat a long list of infectious diseases, including HIV AIDS,
Speaker 1: respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, ebola, and zica. He's
Speaker 1: been leading the U. S government's efforts to combat this pandemic,
Speaker 1: working non stock with his team and communicating consistently and
Speaker 1: honestly with Americans every step of the way. I was
Speaker 1: honored to welcome to the podcast. So, Dr Arouchy, it's
Speaker 1: become almost a cliche to say this is an unprecedented time,
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious, given that you have lived through
Speaker 1: other pandemics, worked in other pandemics, how much of this
Speaker 1: feels unprecedented and how much of it feels eerily familiar. Well, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: the only eerily familiar thing about it is the unpredictable
Speaker 1: nature of outbreaks where you're just going along and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden something comes up. It could be
Speaker 1: subtle the way HIV This month. In the next few
Speaker 1: days where commemorating the forty anniversary of the realization that
Speaker 1: we were dealing with a new syndrome. We didn't know
Speaker 1: what the microbe, the pathogen was. We didn't even have
Speaker 1: a name for it back in June and July. Having
Speaker 1: had I guess I would call it the privilege in
Speaker 1: some respects, but also the painful experience of being involved
Speaker 1: in that from the very first day, that's sort of
Speaker 1: snuck up on you. It was level below the radar screen.
Speaker 1: Then as we learned more and more about it, we
Speaker 1: found out we were dealing with just the tip of
Speaker 1: the iceberg when we saw people who were very, very sick,
Speaker 1: not knowing until we had a test that we were
Speaker 1: dealing with something where they were literally millions of people infected.
Speaker 1: So the fact that outbreaks are unpredictable, they come in
Speaker 1: strange ways, that's the common denominated the difference with this
Speaker 1: that validates the statement it's unprecedented is that when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with something as explosive as this, which has a
Speaker 1: couple of characteristics that I have often referred to, almost
Speaker 1: ironically years ago, is what is your worst nightmare? Dr Fauci.
Speaker 1: People would ask me that five years ago, ten years ago,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, and longer. I would always say it
Speaker 1: was the emergence of a new virus generally jumping species
Speaker 1: from an animal host to a human that had two
Speaker 1: character ristics, one that is extraordinarily efficient in spreading from
Speaker 1: human to human, and two that it has the capability
Speaker 1: of a great degree of morbidity and mortality. And when
Speaker 1: you put those two things together, that's when you get
Speaker 1: my worst nightmare. And that's exactly what we're experienced because
Speaker 1: we have not had anything like this in well over
Speaker 1: a hundred years, since the historic influenza pandemic of nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: So there is a very strong true element of this
Speaker 1: being unprecedented, at least in over a hundred years, you know,
Speaker 1: and Dr Patty, there's an adage in public health that
Speaker 1: outbreaks are inevitable, but epidemics aren't. Now, with the benefit
Speaker 1: of both hindsight and your decades of experience in pandemics.
Speaker 1: What do you think we could have done differently in
Speaker 1: January or February to help save American lives and save
Speaker 1: lives across the globe. Yeah, in some respects it is
Speaker 1: not answerable, because you could certainly have done things differently
Speaker 1: if you knew things differently, So you could say to
Speaker 1: yourself in this country, what could we have done if
Speaker 1: we knew back in January? What we know right now
Speaker 1: is the characteristics that I'm telling you. It's extraordinary ability
Speaker 1: to efficiently spread from human to human, the fact that
Speaker 1: fifty to sixty percent of the transmissions occur from someone
Speaker 1: who is infected but has no symptoms at all. We
Speaker 1: know anywhere from a third of the people who get
Speaker 1: infected never develop any significant symptoms at all that would
Speaker 1: bring attention to any medical intervention. So back then, if
Speaker 1: we knew that we were dealing with in this country
Speaker 1: something as extraordinary as this in its ability to spread,
Speaker 1: we would have done something that likely would have not
Speaker 1: been acceptable to the American public. When we had the
Speaker 1: first case, and I think it was January one, to
Speaker 1: say Okay, it's here, and then a few days later
Speaker 1: or a week or two later, it became clear that
Speaker 1: there was community spread. It just there, which means someone
Speaker 1: infected someone and you don't have the chain of transmission
Speaker 1: locked in, you don't know where the person got it from.
Speaker 1: That being the case, that means it's spreading in society
Speaker 1: beneath the radar screen. If we had known its capability
Speaker 1: of spreading, we could have said, let's shut the country
Speaker 1: down right now to prevent it. I think there would
Speaker 1: have been such extraordinary pushback to say, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. We have one or two cases.
Speaker 1: You want to shut the country down. That's crazy. So
Speaker 1: when you asked me a question, what could we have
Speaker 1: done differently, Well, now that we have five and ninety
Speaker 1: thousand deaths, you go back and say, wow, look what
Speaker 1: this is done. We maybe could have prevented some of
Speaker 1: those had we shut down earlier and prevented the spread.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you look throughout the world, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: even countries that appear to have done well early on,
Speaker 1: every country has gotten hit really badly. Even some of
Speaker 1: the Asian countries now that we pointed to as models
Speaker 1: of their response are now starting to get into trouble,
Speaker 1: including places like Taiwan and Singapore and Vietnam and places
Speaker 1: like that, who seemed to have done very well in
Speaker 1: the first waves. You made a comment that resonates with
Speaker 1: me is how do you prevent an outbreak from becoming
Speaker 1: a pandemic? So I don't think we're necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be able to prevent the emergence of new microbes. They've
Speaker 1: occurred historically for as long as and before history even
Speaker 1: recorded it. History is full of them. But in answer
Speaker 1: to your question, how do you prevent that from becoming
Speaker 1: a pandemic? And that's when we talk about lessons learned?
Speaker 1: What can we learn having gone through this where the
Speaker 1: United States was ranked by public health agencies as being
Speaker 1: the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic
Speaker 1: and we got hit among the top three, with Brazil
Speaker 1: and India as the three worst in the sense of
Speaker 1: numbers of cases and deaths and dr bout You do
Speaker 1: you think that that is because we were prepared for
Speaker 1: previous pandemics and not future ones. I mean, were we
Speaker 1: ready to fight the last war and not the next war?
Speaker 1: I think it's partially that, not completely. I think it
Speaker 1: was there were things that went wrong early on, and
Speaker 1: that was the issue with the testing that we didn't
Speaker 1: have a good testing system for a considerable period of time,
Speaker 1: and we were testing only symptomatic people because we're not
Speaker 1: fully aware that asymptomatic spread was really, really, very important.
Speaker 1: So those are the things that I think could have
Speaker 1: been done differently. And then, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to read litigate what went on last year, but there
Speaker 1: were things that I think could have been done better.
Speaker 1: Although I live in New York now, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Arkansas and then moved when I was twelve to
Speaker 1: d C. And it is heartbreaking to me Dr Facci
Speaker 1: that Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, so much of the South
Speaker 1: have vaccination rates that are half of what we see
Speaker 1: in the Northeast. Since you've had to communicate now over
Speaker 1: so many decades, so many different public health challenges and
Speaker 1: also imperatives, how do you think we rebuild trust in
Speaker 1: science and especially trust in in vaccines and vaccinations. That
Speaker 1: is something that is not going to happen easily, Chelsea.
Speaker 1: I think that we may have to find ways, and
Speaker 1: that's a complicated issue. As you will know, probably better
Speaker 1: than I do, it's a complicated issue of how you
Speaker 1: heal the differences and the hostility. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: the object myself of a phenomenal amount of hostility merely
Speaker 1: because I'm promoting what a really fundamental, simple public health
Speaker 1: principles that seems astounding that that would generate a considerable
Speaker 1: degree of hostility, But it is. It is. So I
Speaker 1: don't think the answer is intensifying the hostility and pointing figures.
Speaker 1: I think the approach is to outreach to try and
Speaker 1: understand each other better and realize that we have differences.
Speaker 1: But those differences should be the source of strength in
Speaker 1: some respects and not the source of chaos. So I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know the answer to your question. It's
Speaker 1: a seemingly simple question with a complicated answer. We've got
Speaker 1: to reach out to people and get them to understand
Speaker 1: that this is for their own safety, their own health,
Speaker 1: and also what I refer to as communal responsibility, your
Speaker 1: responsibility to society. Because there is a thing called the
Speaker 1: chain of transmission of an outbreak, and one of the
Speaker 1: very interesting and I must say quite unique aspects of
Speaker 1: saws COVID two and COVID nineteen is that the same
Speaker 1: virus that has killed almost six hundred thousand Americans makes
Speaker 1: many many people have no symptoms at all. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't bother them. I mean, there's the people getting no
Speaker 1: symptoms at all. So that is in many respects unprecedented
Speaker 1: to have that situation. Usually, when you have something as
Speaker 1: potentially deadly as this, it makes just about everybody a
Speaker 1: little bit sick. This is something where there were people
Speaker 1: who were saying, why should I get vaccinated? The chances
Speaker 1: of my getting into trouble are very very low, and
Speaker 1: they're correct. If you look at the rate of hospitalizations
Speaker 1: of young people, it's a non zero. It's small compared
Speaker 1: to the rate among elderly people and among people with
Speaker 1: underlying conditions. But there are a couple of things there
Speaker 1: that people don't fully understand. You're not completely exempt, because
Speaker 1: a lot of young people wind up getting into trouble statistically,
Speaker 1: not nearly as many as the elderly and those with
Speaker 1: underlying conditions. But there's another aspect of it. Let's say
Speaker 1: you get infected and you don't get any symptoms at all,
Speaker 1: and you could say that, see, I got infected, big deal,
Speaker 1: what's the difference. The difference is that it is conceivable
Speaker 1: and maybe likely that even though you've got no symptoms,
Speaker 1: that you would inadvertently and innocently I'll use that word
Speaker 1: pass it on to someone else who would then pass
Speaker 1: it on to someone else who would then get a
Speaker 1: serious consequence. So there is a degree that have to
Speaker 1: consider of what is my societal responsibility of not being
Speaker 1: part of the chain of transmission as opposed to being
Speaker 1: a dead end for the virus. So do you want
Speaker 1: to be a dead end for the virus or do
Speaker 1: you want to be situation where you're part of the
Speaker 1: transmission chain which would get other people in trouble. But
Speaker 1: that's tough to get that concept. I mean, Dr pot
Speaker 1: I never thought I would say I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a dead end, but yes here I am very happy
Speaker 1: to be fully vaccinated in a In a dead end,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back to stay with us. I don't
Speaker 1: want to ask about preparedness because I think probably a
Speaker 1: lot of people are now as we are vaccinating the country.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people want to put COVID
Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror, leave it in, not worry
Speaker 1: about it again. But we know that the virus is
Speaker 1: not done with us until we have everyone vaccinated and
Speaker 1: we know we need to learn lessons from this to
Speaker 1: help better prepare us going forward. So what less since
Speaker 1: do you think we need to learn, And how do
Speaker 1: you think your work at the NIH has to adapt.
Speaker 1: How do you think the Biden administration has to adapt?
Speaker 1: What concrete things have to happen to ensure we are
Speaker 1: better prepared for the inevitable next time? Okay, so two
Speaker 1: components to my answer to Chelsea. The first is that
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with a global pandemic, you have to
Speaker 1: have a global response. We're not going to be safe
Speaker 1: on this planet until the pandemic is controlled globally, so
Speaker 1: right away it is not necessarily a lesson, but almost
Speaker 1: a mandate that we really need to help the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, as as a rich country, get this
Speaker 1: under control, because if there's still viral dynamics somewhere, even
Speaker 1: if we get this on the very good control here,
Speaker 1: there's always the danger of the generation of variance, which
Speaker 1: then would make our protection somewhat tenuous even with the vaccines.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing when you look at the future,
Speaker 1: what lessons learned for the future, we need to also
Speaker 1: prepare in a global way. There was a thing called
Speaker 1: the Global Health Security Network or the Global Health Security Agenda,
Speaker 1: where you have interconnectivity among countries of the world, good
Speaker 1: modern up to date communications, sharing of re agents, sharing
Speaker 1: of of specimens, continued good collaboration and communication, building up
Speaker 1: in the local areas, the public health infrastructure that would
Speaker 1: allow them to respond and quench something when it breaks
Speaker 1: out in any given country, because outbreaks generally don't start
Speaker 1: spontaneously in twenty five countries. They generally start as a
Speaker 1: jumping of species, usually not always from an animal reservoir
Speaker 1: to a human and then it spreads to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. That doesn't mean that you've got to
Speaker 1: blame the country where it happens. It just so happens,
Speaker 1: but you've got to have those countries prepared to be
Speaker 1: able to contain it. So that's the thing with preparedness.
Speaker 1: The other thing from a scientific standpoint is that we
Speaker 1: are very fortunate that we have made decades and decades
Speaker 1: of investment in basic and clinical biomedical research, which has
Speaker 1: allowed us to do something that's unprecedented, to get a
Speaker 1: vaccine in which a virus was first identified in January
Speaker 1: of and then in December of that same year, eleven
Speaker 1: months later to be putting vaccine into people's arms. That's efficacious.
Speaker 1: If we were having this conversation ten years ago, you
Speaker 1: would have told me I was completely crazy thinking that
Speaker 1: that would happen. It usually takes years and years. And
Speaker 1: the speed was not because we were reckless in doing
Speaker 1: things and cutting corners. The speed was related to the
Speaker 1: extraordinary amount of in u stament that was made of
Speaker 1: the previous decades in clinical and basic research. So there
Speaker 1: are another component of lessons learned. We need to continue
Speaker 1: to make the investments in research that will allow us
Speaker 1: to have the scientific component of the response be optimal.
Speaker 1: And fortunately for us, that's what happened with regard to
Speaker 1: the vaccines. Dr P. You you mentioned earlier the Global
Speaker 1: Health Security Agenda, which while it had antecedents over many years,
Speaker 1: really got codified in the aftermath of a Bola and
Speaker 1: of the United States saying what has happened in Western
Speaker 1: Africa is clearly a tragedy for people there, but it
Speaker 1: is a danger to us here too, and we do
Speaker 1: need to have more robust public health architecture everywhere. And
Speaker 1: then that wasn't a priority for the Trump administration, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a priority for the world. I do
Speaker 1: admittedly have a little bit of a concern that once
Speaker 1: we are through COVID nineteen, I worry we might lose
Speaker 1: focus on the need to build robust global architecture to
Speaker 1: help protect public health everywhere. Well, Chelsea, I definitely share
Speaker 1: your concern, and the reason I do is from my
Speaker 1: experience in that corporate memory for things that I've been
Speaker 1: very very difficult in the sense of responding and preparing
Speaker 1: is often short lived, and when you put this behind us,
Speaker 1: we will be dealing with problems that are real and present.
Speaker 1: Yet it's difficult to get people to understand that the
Speaker 1: threat of an outbreak is perpetually a real and present danger.
Speaker 1: So what we've got to do as a globe, as
Speaker 1: as a planet, as a community of nations is to
Speaker 1: just make sure we tell ourselves that when we get
Speaker 1: this under control, that we've got to say never again
Speaker 1: and need it, and never again means to really put
Speaker 1: the effort into the kind of preparation that will require
Speaker 1: considerable resources. And even though it's tough to convince people
Speaker 1: to give resources to something that isn't happening. Now, we've
Speaker 1: got to call back the memory of two thousand nine
Speaker 1: one because as we started off in the beginning of
Speaker 1: this podcast, the fact is that this is really what
Speaker 1: happened to us. It just came out of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: it just immobilized us for such an extraordinary period of time.
Speaker 1: And we're in our second year now. The economy has
Speaker 1: been wrecked by this for sure, not only here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Thank goodness, we're recovering now, but it's
Speaker 1: still a lot of people out of work. I think
Speaker 1: those kinds of memories should spur us on to make
Speaker 1: sure we are adequately prepared next time around. Well, and
Speaker 1: hope we will spur us on. Returning to a comment
Speaker 1: that you made earlier that I am in vigorous agreement
Speaker 1: with that we have responsibility to help vaccinate the world.
Speaker 1: And while I certainly appreciate President Biden's commitment to donate
Speaker 1: seventy million doses by July four, we know we can't
Speaker 1: effectively donate our way out of this. So I am
Speaker 1: curious Dr about you if we think about the architecture
Speaker 1: that we really need to help protect public health globally.
Speaker 1: While often the focus is on surveillance and specimen collecting, testing,
Speaker 1: what do you think it should be for vaccine research
Speaker 1: and development, for example, or the actual ability to manufacture
Speaker 1: and to guarantee the quality of vaccines in the next generation.
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that, and that is referring to
Speaker 1: building up the capacity and the ability to do technology
Speaker 1: transfer so that when you have an outbreak, it isn't
Speaker 1: only companies in Switzerland, the United States and the UK,
Speaker 1: but you have plants and companies and technology and the
Speaker 1: knowledge to do it in Senegal and Ethiopia and South
Speaker 1: Africa and Indonesia and Brazil and Chile, so that when
Speaker 1: you have an outbreak, you do have the capability. And
Speaker 1: that is building up not only the infrastructure of public
Speaker 1: health to do surveillance and monitoring, but also the ability
Speaker 1: to respond at a global level. To rely on donations
Speaker 1: is a quick, immediate, partial fix, but the real durable,
Speaker 1: sustainable fix now in the future is to allow other
Speaker 1: countries that generally don't have that capacity to be able
Speaker 1: to make vaccine in a timely fashion and not depend
Speaker 1: completely on donations from the rich country. The rich country
Speaker 1: should donate if they have to, but the real ultimate
Speaker 1: solution is to have a world where it's evenly distributed,
Speaker 1: with his equity and opportunity to make your own countermeshes.
Speaker 1: In this case, it would be vaccines and therapeutics. We're
Speaker 1: taking a quick break, stay with us, Dr pot You
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that you've been under quite a bit of
Speaker 1: personal attack for talking about things that should be I
Speaker 1: would argue like fairly non controversial, like the importance of vaccines,
Speaker 1: of vaccinations. And we know that so many of our
Speaker 1: public health officials have been under in noorminate stress, working
Speaker 1: day after day without rest to try to help protect
Speaker 1: public health over the last year and a half. And
Speaker 1: we know that many public health officials have also received
Speaker 1: horrific abuse, and that the mental health toll has been
Speaker 1: really immense. What do you think we need to do
Speaker 1: to try to help support everyone who's really been on
Speaker 1: the front lines to recover from this horrifically stressful time
Speaker 1: is hopefully we recover as a country. Yeah, well, you're
Speaker 1: pointing out something that I think everyone hopefully will ultimately
Speaker 1: recognize is the extraordinary courage and effort that has been
Speaker 1: put in by our frontline health care workers. I mean,
Speaker 1: they truly are the heroes and the heroines of this
Speaker 1: the physical risk that they took are taking to take
Speaker 1: care of people. The physical and mental strain of seeing
Speaker 1: people every single day dying right in front of you
Speaker 1: with very little that you can do, particularly when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with people who have underlying conditions in which when
Speaker 1: they get hospitalized, there and very very difficult straits. It's
Speaker 1: a reality. We've lost close to five nine people in
Speaker 1: this country. That's terrible for the losses of those people
Speaker 1: and their families. But what people don't a pre cate
Speaker 1: because I've been there. I've been there, and I know
Speaker 1: what what it means, the terrible strain and stress when
Speaker 1: you're trying your best to save someone's life and they
Speaker 1: just lose. You lose them person after person at the person.
Speaker 1: We've got to pay attention to the stress and probably
Speaker 1: a good degree of post traumatic stress that those people have.
Speaker 1: So I think attention to mental health issues is something
Speaker 1: we really absolutely have a responsibility to do for people
Speaker 1: who have given it everything and yet have exhausted themselves
Speaker 1: in the process. Your dr pot, I want to be
Speaker 1: respectful your time. I also want to end on an
Speaker 1: optimistic note. We spoke earlier about how the COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: vaccines were accelerated through just extraordinary amounts of attention and
Speaker 1: investment and collaboration really across the globe, and so I
Speaker 1: just I'm curious what else that is being worked on
Speaker 1: currently at the n I H. Do you think is
Speaker 1: close to a breakthrough and that could similarly really help
Speaker 1: save and protect a lot of lives soon. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's in multiple fields of medicine, not just infectious disease.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that we're having a lot
Speaker 1: of optimism now. You know, we've done spectacularly well in
Speaker 1: the development of life saving drugs for persons living with HIV,
Speaker 1: to the point now if you're infected, you get put
Speaker 1: on one pill that contains three drugs and you can
Speaker 1: go essentially lead to almost a normal lifespan. So we've
Speaker 1: done well there. The thing that has been the challenge
Speaker 1: is a vaccine for HIV. But I believe some of
Speaker 1: the technologies that have been developed and shown to be
Speaker 1: highly successful, like the MR and a vaccine platform technology
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen is now being actively pursued in the
Speaker 1: field of HIV and in other areas of medicine, including
Speaker 1: can serve and other infectious diseases. That's what I think
Speaker 1: is perched for breakthroughs. Also when the field of immunotherapy
Speaker 1: for cancer. I mean, the more we learn about how
Speaker 1: we can control the regulation of the immune system, they're
Speaker 1: going to be cancers that have been beyond the reach
Speaker 1: of cures that likely will now for the first time
Speaker 1: see that you can actually marshal the immune system's response.
Speaker 1: Cancer immunotherapy has been in some areas quite successful, but
Speaker 1: in some areas still very frustrating. I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: see a lot of that frustration turned to good results
Speaker 1: within a reasonable period of time. So there's never been
Speaker 1: a time more exciting in the field of biomedical research
Speaker 1: then now, and and that's the reason why we are
Speaker 1: so grateful for the support that we continue to get
Speaker 1: from the Congress and from multiple administrations, because it's certainly
Speaker 1: has given us an extraordinary tool for COVID nineteen. If
Speaker 1: it were not for that, we would be in much
Speaker 1: much more dire straits than we are right now with
Speaker 1: regard to this pandemic. Dr Facci, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your leadership and for your time today for giving
Speaker 1: me kind of things to be optimistic about, but also
Speaker 1: of course thanks to still worry about and work on.
Speaker 1: So thank you so very much. Thank you very much. Chelseae.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you're having me on your show. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Dr Anthony Facci is the director of the National Institute
Speaker 1: of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U S National
Speaker 1: Institutes of Health or the n AGE. If you're not
Speaker 1: yet vaccinated, go to vaccines dot gov to find a
Speaker 1: vaccine site near you and anyone can visit. We can
Speaker 1: do this dot HHS dot gov to join in a
Speaker 1: month of action to help get as many people vaccinated
Speaker 1: as possible. And volunteers, even if you're vaccinated, who take
Speaker 1: at least five actions may be invited to the White
Speaker 1: House in July. And as we reflect on what our
Speaker 1: country has been through, let's keep listening to scientists and
Speaker 1: experts like Dr Faucci and is Tea. Let's keep asking
Speaker 1: hard and important questions so that we can learn from
Speaker 1: what's worked and what hasn't so we are better prepared
Speaker 1: for the inevitable next time. And to any of our
Speaker 1: listeners who have been on the front lines of this
Speaker 1: crisis as a nurse, doctor, researcher, or anyone else in
Speaker 1: the world of public health, thank you. Our country owes
Speaker 1: you a huge debt of gratitude, and I hope that
Speaker 1: you're taking care of your own health to physically and mentally.
Speaker 1: In Fact is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Erica Goodmanson, Lauren Peterson, Cathy Russo, Julie Subrian,
Speaker 1: and Justin Wright, with help from the Hidden Light team
Speaker 1: of Barry Lurry, Sarah Horowitz, Nikki Huggett, Emily Young and Humanity,
Speaker 1: with additional support from Lindsay Hoffman. Original music is by
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